Sunday, May 18, 2008

Jewish teenager savagely beaten in Brooklyn

Police are claiming that robbery, not bias, was the motive. So why was the 16-year-old hassid beaten about the head with a baseball bat?

Read a local TV news take on it, then check out the blame the victim comments before they get deleted. One of the comments actually blames the victim for going out late to buy baby formula. Pathetic.

from WABC News 7online.com: Brooklyn teenager beaten 5/16/08

NYPD searches for suspectsBROOKLYN (WABC) -- A Brooklyn teenager is in the hospital after being beaten so badly that the last thing he remembers is leaving his house on his bike.

Police spent the day near Albany Avenue and Empire Boulevard searching for any clues.

In that community, the paths of a Hasidic 16-year-old and two men may have collided, with robbery appearing to be a motive.

"The kid was beaten so viciously, he was unconscious and didn't remember his name," said Binyomin Lifshiez, who is with Shomrin Patrol.

t was just after midnight when two 911 calls came in to police.

"They did see an individual laying in the street and they saw two people leaving with a bicycle from the immediate scene," NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly said.

Because the teenager cannot remember any details, police are left, for now, to speculate.

"We are going on the premise here that this young man has been assaulted. He had no property on him and his bike has been taken," Kelly added.

The lives of many cross there. Black, white, Hasidic, Muslim. There is no indication, sources tell Eyewitness News, that this was a bias incident. Levi Davis believes a community effort is needed.

"We all have to get together and make sure we put in a full effort to stop these things from happening," Davis said.

As community affairs officers were handing out flyers, urging potential witneses to come forward, Assemblyman Karim Camara spoke out.

"There has to be a better response," he siad. "Not just when an attack happens, but an ongoing proactive response of community leaders, elected officials, from rabbis, pastors, all of us coming together to say this is our community and we can have safe communities."

A number of Hasidic men protested the beating Friday evening by marching down Empire Boulevard to the 71st Precinct.

1 comment:

Keli Ata said...

Interesting. The NYPD doesn't sound particularly bright. I mean, they say they're going on the presumption that the kid was assaulted? He was assaulted. He had no property on him but his bike was stolen.

So he was robbed, too. Whether it was a hate crime based on his religion is hard to tell but given the demographics of the community my gut instinct tells me that this was a hate crime.

Would the police be so quick to deny that it was a hate crime if the poor kid was Black or Muslim?

And the fact that the teen was assaulted and robbed doesn't preclude the possibility that it was a hate crime. It's possible that the robbers were looking for someone to rob and set their sights on targeting a Jew.

Or they wanted to target a Jew and figured while they were there they might as well steal his bike.

Hate crime or not it's a horrible crime and I hope they investigate it as they would any felony assault and robbery.

If it turns out to be racially motivated then they should bring in the FBI at once so these thugs can face federal charges as well as state charges.

Blaming the victim for being out late. Disgusting.

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